“You’re right.” I lower my hands. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
My apology turns him so relieved, like he was worried I’d make this a bigger fight, worried this was going to be the part where I’d lose him too.
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”
“You’re right again.”
He moves a little closer. “You going to be okay?”
“Sure.” We stare at each other and there’s something about the concern in his eyes that makes me want to shake myself off. Just because he’s not angry anymore doesn’t mean I’ve fixed this yet, the way it needs to be fixed. “Just ask about Penny if you want to know.”
“But you don’t want to tell me,” he says. “Because you didn’t tell me.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Well, I can’t force you, and if you don’t—you don’t. But you should know it’d be a weird thing between us. And I wouldn’t like it.”
No, he wouldn’t. I don’t have to tell him, but my not telling him would leave this uncomfortably open, wanting us to return to it, whether or not we ever did. And probably ending us, if we don’t. So I definitely need to lie now.
“I told you we were close, me and Penny.”
“But you didn’t tell me she was here that night.”
“Because she’s not my friend anymore. I mean, we hate each other.” I cross my arms. “In junior year, we had a falling out over a … boy.”
Boy. Tastes like blood to say it.
“She came to the diner on Friday to make sure I—”
The unfinished lie falls from my tongue. To make sure—what? To make sure I … I see Penny at the diner there, her mouth moving, and those things she said to me. I can’t, won’t, give them voice. I force the memory away. I reach for the pettiest thing I can think of because no one has a hard time believing how petty a girl can be.
“To make sure I wasn’t going to the lake later. That’s how bad it is between us. I could bring down an entire party for her just by being there. It made me so mad she came in to my work, got in my space and ruined my night, I thought I’d return the favor. I went to the lake to do that. It’s not a nice story. Especially now. And that’s why I didn’t tell you.”
Leon’s face falls a little as he thinks about it, and maybe I’m not so in the clear after all. Who wants to be with a petty girl? It strikes a fear in me I try not to show.
“I didn’t know she’d go missing,” I say.
“Well—no,” he says. “You couldn’t have.”
“I hate thinking about it because now she’s gone, I see—” I have to redeem myself, but these words taste like blood to say too: “I see … how awful I was.”
His expression softens. “Well, Penny doesn’t seem all that nice in this story, either.” He pauses. “I could talk to Holly, if you want.”
I’m capable of having my own conversations, but this whole night is wearing on me. It’s barely started and I’m tired and I don’t know that I could tell the same lie half as well, especially to Holly. Leon might.
“Would you?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just give me a minute and I’ll lay it out for her,” he says.
He turns to the door and I say, “Leon,” and he turns back and looking at him— I need to tell him something that’s true.
I want something between us that’s true.
“I like you,” I say. “I didn’t mean to make it hard for you to like me back.”
He hesitates, and then—he moves to me and kisses the side of my mouth before disappearing back inside. It happens so fast, my heart barely realizes it at first, but when it does, it’s like some small part of my world has righted itself.
I’m still her.
When I’m about to go in, the door opens and Holly comes out, an unlit cigarette dangling between her lips. I stand there awkwardly while she lights up. She doesn’t speak to or look at me until after that first, long drag. She savors it.
“I didn’t know you and Penny Young had a history,” she says. “I might have done things a little differently if I had.”
“I shouldn’t have run my mouth at you like that. I’m sorry, Holly.”
She nods. She pats the space of wall next to her. I lean against it.
“You’re right,” she says after a minute. “You’re not my daughter, but I’ll be damned if I don’t worry about you girls. I worry about my daughter and the shit she seems determined to get herself into, lately. I worry about Annette and that loser she’s decided to move in with. I worry about you when you wander off and now I’m worried about this Penny Young, who I don’t even know, because I have a daughter. Anytime something bad happens to a woman close to me, it’s how I think. I have a daughter.”
“You have a son.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not the same.”
“They’re going to find her,” I say. “Alive.”
She tosses the cigarette and grinds it out.
When it’s time for me to clock out, I leave through the front door, try to get a good look at those posters again. My eyes are on Penny and her eyes are on me, until I round the building. I’m unlocking my bike from the bike rack when a truck pulls up beside me. There’s a parking spot so close, I don’t realize the man inside the truck is talking to me until he’s repeating himself.
“I said, where you headed on that bike, this late?” I turn. His arm hangs lazily over his open window. He looks young—early thirties, maybe—but the kind of young that’s been in the sun too long. He sniffs. “Not safe to be out this late around here. A girl’s missing.”
I imagine her getting into a truck like this. Getting into this truck.
“What would you know about that?” I ask him.
He smiles, taps his fingers against the outside of the door for a long minute, and then he shakes his head and drives away.